Random stories

Finally, I had traced him. Backup was en route. E.Y.E. drones were in the air. I blinked thrice, bringing up my targeting HUD. I checked my magazines and batteries. This crazy zipper wasn't going to get away this time.

I moved like a ghost, down the stairs and into the Hinterlands. I hated them, these crawlspaces between corpo bunkers and city structures, but they were the only places left in the city that weren't monitored. As a consequence, they were overrun with zippers, psychos, junkies, geeks: anyone who valued privacy over safety.

I slipped on my IR lenses, peering through the darkness. There. A catwalk, and a keypad.

If I was quick, I could make the bust before private security got to him. It would be a light on the city's dash if we were the ones to finally nail this zipper. I hurried over, scanned the keypad. Used city worker overrides. The door slid open.

Monowire whipped dangerously close, forcing me around the doorframe. Electrical noise like frying bacon drowned out all sound. My audio feed was null. I couldn't hear the shots, but I knew they were coming. I ducked, as metal shavings exploded from the wall above me. Same tricks; this was my guy.

We had done this part of the dance before. We knew each other's moves. Next up, he woul--

The static screening vanished. Audio came back online. This was... new.

He was receiving a call. He had to turn off his scrambler to do so.

"Yes? Yes it is. She what? I'll be right there; ten... no, disregard. *Seven* minutes. Thank you," he finished.

I heard a low hum. I took an E.Y.E. out of my kit and tossed it into the air, opening live+.02 feed. Risky, but I had to see.

It was a bunker, or something similar. He was deactivating a custom security suite. Indicators suddenly went dark all across the near wall. An EM denial field deactivated less than seven centimeters from my foot--I would have stepped right through it, frying my leg augs.

My E.Y.E. caught a frame of him moving, before he fried it. I swore. He was faster than me.

Visual returned. He was *right there* in front of me. I tried to aim. He was faster.

"My apologies, Detective. Something has come up. Next time, perhaps."

---

When I reactivated, my whole system felt fried. Broken E.Y.E.s lay scattered about. External sync showed I was only offline for twenty two seconds, but that was enough. He was gone.

He hadn't killed me, though. And he had recognized what was happening. He even spoke, probably on a net call. Then he had spoken *to me.* That was... unexpected.

Zippers lost control, lost their ability to distinguish reality from what was happening in their game. That was their whole deal. Was this guy a psycho, instead? A geek, maybe? Was my intel bad?

I looked around. I was inside the bunker. The door was shut, but only directionally sealed. He had... what, thrown me in here and locked the door to keep the junkies away?

Nothing made sense. Zippers don't act like that. Neither do geeks.

I retrieved my pistol. The magazine was gone, as was the battery pack to my armor. I patted myself down. Everything else was intact. Even my SIM was still there. MED diagnostic showed only two minor impacts on my person--probably where he had grabbed me, and where I had hit the floor.

A known cyber terrorist shorts out a pursuing officer, disables me, has me dead to rights, could have killed me at his leisure or stripped me for augs... but instead, he just nicks my ammo and tucks me in his safety bunker, unsecured. And then leaves.

What. The. Fuck.

I rebooted: all systems booted up. I did a scan: no malware. I even checked my uplink. Full signal. He hadn't even hacked me.

I couldn't parse it. I looked around. And then it all started to make sense.

The bunker wasn't just a tube and some storage. It a *bunk*, in the traditional sense. There was a *bed.* There was *food.* There was some sort of colorful markings, too sloppy for gang tags, all along one wall. Wax sticks, wrapped in paper, all different colors. An old analogue data brick, with some sort of cartoon monster tagged on the front.

Along one wall, there were... pictures. Also analogue. Some kind of chemical reaction must have made them; I could detect light-sensitive nitrates in the sublayers. There were smudges of skin oil on the plastic square borders. I moved closer.

They were pictures of a person. A woman, holding a bundle. A pinkish little face peeked out of the bundle.

A baby. A live baby. I fried a little, inside.

"Fuck me. He's *organic,*" I muttered aloud.

"Mostly," he replied. "And so is she."

I straightened up, slowly. He stood in the doorway, holding a gun in one hand, some kind of wide field emitter. In his other arm, he held his daughter.

"You're not a runner," I realized.

"No, Detective. I'm a *father*."

---

Submitted by BlueOrangeMorality on Thu, Oct 13, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

The villain is a surprisingly good parent. They pack their little one bentos and put notes inside. NOTHING will stop them from seeing shows and recitals. They show their hostages pictures of them. The hero didn’t know of the child and was confused when the villain just left their fight.